


Complements

by May



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/pseuds/May
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re definitely staying here.” In making a confirmation rather than asking a question, Karkat’s voice is almost as level as he’d like it to be. He remembers a faded, glittering poster on his wall and pushes his hands into his pockets. Even after everything that’s happened, she looks unreal and pasted on to the backdrop of the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complements

**Author's Note:**

> For more context on the fic please look at the end notes.

“You’re definitely staying here.” In making a confirmation rather than asking a question, Karkat’s voice is almost as level as he’d like it to be. He remembers a faded, glittering poster on his wall and pushes his hands into his pockets. Even after everything that’s happened, she looks unreal and pasted on to the backdrop of the room.

“Yeah,” she says. Metaphors from shitty poetry written in her name somehow don’t apply here. The Condesce’s voice doesn’t quite have the force of a lightning bolt hitting the waves, and her hair sags unceremoniously against the linoleum. “Where else would I go, guppy?”

She smiles and something ever so tender and young quakes inside Karkat. Gamzee sits, slumped, at her feet. Her long fingers, only proportionately slender, wrap around one of his wrists,  his spare, bony fingers splayed. The Condesce folds the length of his arm upwards to place her other hand firmly on his shoulder, then she pulls.

There is a sharp, gristly pop as Gamzee’s shoulder dislocates. Karkat still cannot get over the fact that the Condesce is conspicuously big and, in this way, still matches the image burned into Karkat’s pan in wigglerhood.

Karkat does not have a response, but it hardly feels like it was a demanding question, in any case. There’s no armoured guards, there’s no weapons being rigidly clasped, there’s no ominous grey starship walls (the walls actually have an odd floral paper). The Empress can’t fit her huge horns into this cozy human foodblock, so she has to hunch over a little. Her hair, taking up stubborn extra space, curtains both herself and Gamzee as she pulls his other shoulder out of joint. Karkat doesn’t know what to say to her. It’s still so odd to have her there.

The Condesce lays Gamzee out and lets his arms dangle uselessly. He stares at the ceiling, his eyes wide and glassy. He looks more familiar at every slow blink. The Empress drips oil onto him and begins coating his skin.

 

“Wow.”

The slices of meat are arranged delicately on John’s plate, vague purple against the deep greens of the accompanying vegetables. “So…she actually does cook? I thought that was just a smokescreen for all that evil. Actually, I thought that even _before_ I knew she was an alien queen.”

“Yeah, well, I lived among humans, before, remember?” She looks at him – her eyes are a deep fuschia pink, like faded velvet. John supposes that he’s only met young trolls, whose eyes are just brightly veined towards the edges of the irises.

The Condesce hooks the tines of her fork into one of the meat slices on her plate and then cuts it with her knife. It splits easily and evenly. It’s good to have flesh that doesn’t have the resistance of age.

 “I don’t really see why the carcass has to be there on the table while we eat.” Aranea reaches her small, soft hand forward to grab one of Gamzee’s horns, and her palm is slight enough to fit into its twisting curve. A version of Meenah is watching her and she concentrates on the small fissures in those horns. Her fingernails catch in them, so she withdraws her hand.

 “It’s not really a carcass, though,” says the Empress. The words are smothered and wet around the food she’s eating. It’s sloppy and tart-sweet for Aranea. “But it is cooked traditionally.”

“You just set up a spit roast on the floor?” asked John. He uses the last forkful of meat to mop up some of the gravy. It was made from the broth that the meat was cooked in, and has a light sweetness to it. “That’s still better than bags of mixing powder, I guess.”

Vriska slices into her food, carefully, and then raises her fork, slowly, to slide tiny morsels into her mouth. Aranea watches and decides that Vriska must be savouring her meat. She regained life not too long ago, after all. Aranea knows first hand that the memory of taste does not compare to the real thing.

“Humans could learn,” says Eridan. In front of the Empress, Eridan eats like he’s under oath.

“Yeah,” says Karkat.

Vriska’s eyes, all eight of them, flicker around the room, resting only a little longer on Eridan. Resurrection seems to have made her more subdued, though you would still never mistake her for some kind of shrinking violet. It’s like a wounded creature skulking – not dangerous at the moment, that last part being operative.

Vriska, as she eats, is precise but not delicate; she spears up hunks of meat after one rend of her knife. She slides her fork into her mouth, the meat on her tongue, and her eyes settle on Gamzee’s face.

 

Later, away from everyone else, Karkat watches Eridan chew slowly on one singular morsel. He grimaces before spitting it out onto the flat pale sideboard, and the two of them stare at it for a moment. It’s small and misshapen, and Karkat picks up a cloth to scoop it away as Eridan watches superciliously.

 “What was that, Kar?” The low taste of the meat sticks to Eridan’s tongue, and he flexes it against the roof of his mouth. “You look like my lusus when he was inside my hive.”

Karkat doesn’t look at the meat that Eridan has spat out before he throws it in the bin. “My lusus used to click his claws at me when he was annoyed,” he replies. “It’s weird to think about, now.”

On that sideboard, there is a plate loaded up with small squares of purple meat, each one sliced and roasted through. As Karkat watches, Eridan fingers the edge of the plate, gently, and then narrows his eyes.

 “So what the fuck is wrong with it?” demands Karkat.

Eridan pokes at one of the squares. “It’s disgusting. It’s too fucking chewy and has this weird metallic taste.”

Karkat slides one of them into his mouth and bites, letting the cooked juices spill over his tongue. They are, he thinks, sweet and tangy – no doubt a result of the cooking. “We need to appreciate it,” he says around the meat. “Don’t forget where it comes from.”

Eridan shrugs and gingerly nibbles one of the pieces of meat before putting it back, his mouth curling into a sneer. “Yeah, I do. It’s what we were saddled with. The weird thing is…”

“Yeah?”

“It’s _hers._ The food was hers and she prepares it for us and she’s the fucking _queen_ , Kar.” Karkat splays his fingers on the counter. Obviously, he has respect. She’s so old and a troll doesn’t even have to be royalty to pick up techniques.

When he had first seen the Empress, Eridan had been awed enough that he hadn’t said anything, his mouth hanging open like a dead fish. He had sunk, drained from that and the effort of living again, into Karkat’s arms. There had been the meat, and Eridan had eaten it, still miserably. Karkat knew that he had had a notion that he could sweep the The Condesce off of her feet. Karkat had cultivated a similar fantasy, though his was more platonic.

The square of meat squeezed pathetically between his fingers, Eridan gives a casual glance around the kitchen. Karkat decides that he looks too ridiculously ostentatious for his surroundings and he knows that Eridan doesn’t like them much. But, then, they’ve all been sporadically displaced.

 “I can’t believe she cooks in here, this is too…too…fuckin’…”

“Yeah…” says Karkat.

Not even the plate of arranged purple meat makes a difference to how _alien_ the place looks. Karkat takes another square, gives it a cursory glance and then pops it into his mouth. Karkat knows from having cooked meat in his hive that retaining the animal’s hemotype is reasonably difficult. Keeping it alive probably makes a difference, though.

Eridan shifts on his feet. Karkat reaches out a hand and brushes it down his cheek, and Eridan’s bearing seems to settle, just a little.

“Shooosh.” Karkat feels inclined to do that. He slides another meat square into his mouth, the juices of it fresh and sweet. He doesn’t know what Eridan is talking about; she did an amazing job.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my tumblr Nasty Purple Blood, which is based around stuff happening to Gamzee. I was prompted to write vore and this was the result.


End file.
